Adapting the Police Authority Concept to a Centralised National Police Service: Appearance over Substance in the Republic of Ireland?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12354 |
| Date | 01 July 2018 |
| Author | Dermot Walsh |
| Published date | 01 July 2018 |
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Adapting the Police Authority Concept to a Centralised
National Police Service: Appearance over Substance
in the Republic of Ireland?
Dermot Walsh∗
The Republic of Ireland has been convulsed by a series of police corruption scandals over
the past fifteen years and they show no sign of abating. In 2015, in an attempt to stem the
consequent drain in public confidence in the Garda, the government established a Policing
Authority which it presented as ‘the most important single change in the governance of the
Garda S´
ıoch´
ana in its history’. This article critically examines whether the new Irish Policing
Authority can be interpreted as a successful adaptation of the traditional police authority concept
to a parliamentary democracy policed by a single, national body. In particular, it considers
whether it is equipped to shield the Garda and policing from the influence of partisan political
and institutional interests, while at the same time deliver transparent democratic scrutiny of the
Garda and policing on behalf of all sections of the community.
INTRODUCTION
The Republic of Ireland has been convulsed by a series of police corruption
scandals over the past fifteen years and they show no sign of abating. They
have spawned no less than four Tribunals of Inquiry, nine Commissions of
Investigation, several government sponsored reviews and investigations and, ul-
timately, a Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland.1In 2005, major
legislative reforms on Garda governance and accountability failed to restore
public confidence, even though they were described by the Minister for Jus-
tice at the time as containing ‘the most important legislative proposals on
policing ever to come before the Houses of [Parliament]’.2Only nine years
later, the government felt compelled to announce yet further fundamental
reform. This entailed the establishment of a ‘Policing Authority’, a concept
expressly rejected by the Minister for Justice less than two months earlier on
the premise that experience in England and Walesshowed that it did not deliver
sufficient democratic accountability.3The immediate catalyst for the sudden
volte face were conclusions in a report from senior counsel to the effect that
the Minister for Justice at the time had failed to have allegations of serious
Garda corruption and neglect properly investigated.4Of particular importance
∗Kent Law School, University of Kent.I am most g rateful for the very helpful comments fromJohn
McDaniel, Michael Mulqueen and the two anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft of this article.
1 The Commission’s website is http://policereform.ie/.
2 Dail debates vol 597, No 4, 953 10 February 2005.
3 Dail debates vol 829, No 2, 6-7 5 February 2014.
4Review of the action taken by An Garda S´
ıoch´
ana pertaining to certain allegations made by Sergeant
Maurice McCabe (6 May 2014) (The Guerin Report). The report has since been removed from
C2018 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2018 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2018) 81(4) MLR 622–645
Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Dermot Walsh
was a conclusion to the effect that the Minister had been content to accept
assurances from the Garda Commissioner that the allegations had been inves-
tigated and found to be unwarranted (even though the Commissioner himself
was the subject of some of the allegations). Although that conclusion has since
been challenged by the Minister in question, it fuelled long-standing percep-
tions of a police-government relationship in which the immediate political and
institutional interests of the latter prevail to the prejudice of a professional and
publicly accountable police service.5The damage to public confidence in the
Garda, the administration of justice and political stability generally was further
compounded by the very rare event of both the Garda Commissioner and the
Minister for Justice being forced out of office in the ensuing turmoil. The
ongoing (and new) controversies have since resulted in the Commissioner’s
successor departing reluctantly less than two years after being appointed. In-
evitably, all of this has kept the vexed issue of democratic governance and
accountability of the police to the fore in Ireland.
Many liberal democracies have struggled to devise institutional structures
capable of delivering effective democratic scrutiny of policing, while at the
same time avoiding the associated risks of partisan political control in this
sensit ive area.6In England and Wales, the police authority concept featured as
a prominent part of the institutional solution to this challenge for more than
fifty years, and can be traced back for almost two centuries. From a distance,
therefore, it might have seemed that it offered a solution to the Irish crisis.
Indeed, the establishment of a police authority to dilute central government
control over policing had been a regular demand from political parties in
opposition and from other commentators in Ireland for decades. Nevertheless,
it was not the only option available to the Irish government. Nor was it
necessarily the most appropriate one.
Historically, police authorities wereestablished and functioned in the context
of the locally-based policing structures in England and Wales. Each police
authority was responsible for the policing of its area on behalf of the local
community. The consequent dispersal of democratic police governance across
41 local police authorities outside London played a vital role in diluting central
government control over policing. It cannot simply be assumed that this police
authority concept is readily transferrable to a polity, such as the Republic of
Ireland, where policing has always been treated as a central executive function
delivered through the medium of a single national police organisation which,
the government’s website following the decision of the Court of Appeal in Shatter vGuerin
[2016] IECA 318. That decision is currently on appeal to the Supreme Court.
5 See, for example: Report on Remuneration and Conditions of Service (Dublin: Stationery Office,
1970) para 1267; C. Brady, Guardians of the Peace (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1974) 102-105,
119-122 and, generally,chs 8-14; J. Brewer et al, The Police,Public Order and the State (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 2nd ed, 1996) 103-107; V. Conway, Policing Twentieth Century Ireland: A History of
An Garda S´
ıoch´
ana (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) ch 3, 178-179 and 209-210; D. P. J. Walsh,
‘Tightening the Noose of Central Government Control over Policing in Ireland: Innovations in
the Garda S´
ıoch´
ana Act 2005’ (2009) 60 NILQ 163; D. P. J. Walsh, The Irish Police: a Legal and
Constitutional Perspective (Dublin: Round Hall Sweet and Maxwell,1998) 124-128 and 397-402.
6 See, for example, M. Beare and T. Murray, ‘Introduction’ in M. Beare and T. Murray (eds),
Police and Government Relations: Who’s Calling the Shots? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2007).
C2018 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2018 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2018) 81(4) MLR 622–645 623
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